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? about metal components in barn...

...specifically the metal bars used as stall fronts & dividers. I'm getting estimates from local metal fabrication/welding shops and have the option of getting either a galvanized or powder coated finish. What do "normal" people use in their barn? Is there any danger to horses if they munch on/chip/ingest small amounts of the powder coating?

I've gotten one estimate back and was a bit taken aback at the price, but am waiting on 2 other estimates to come in. Any ballpark costs for a 7 stall barn (7 stall front bars with 4x4ish grills in the stall partitions)? Also, any reputable companies (other than Ramm) that will manufacture and ship if it comes to that?

Thanks for any input...this is the last hurdle to tackle before I an bring my ponies home

Classic Equine Equipment is great...

We built 3 - 12x16 stalls into an old barn we rehabbed for horses and had Classic build the front grills, divider grills and big 8' x 8' sliding doors, which we installed with the wooden half-walls we built ourselves.

They are powder coated a beautiful hunter green; I think most all commercially built stall components are powder coated rather than painted. They are so much less likely to chip than paint and look a lot better than galvanized IMO. Ours have been in for over three years now and I don't think there is a scratch on them.

The doors (which my DH was careful to hang perfectly) roll at the touch of a finger even though they weigh almost 250 pounds each.

Since it is an old barn and we fit the stalls between existing posts, the dimensions of each stall varied slightly. Classic was great about working with me on getting the dimensions right and they had no problem with doing a custom job. Some places I spoke with only would provide standard size components.

Overall I recommend them highly. They weren't the cheapest (ha! none of them are cheap!) but I thought their quality was a lot better than some of the others I looked at. There are a lot of suppliers, though, so google horse stall components.

Costs - two 12' x 32" dividers, 3 approximately 8' x32" fronts with swing feed doors, & the three highly custom, full grill doors approximately 8' x 8' with 'gossip gates' was about (gasp!) $6000 three years ago. over half of that was the doors, however, which could have been smaller if we'd wanted to do the stalls differently. We could have done 4 - 12x12 stalls with more normal doors for about the same price from classic, but I wanted the bigger stalls and they fit into the existing structure much better.

Seriously...check out Triton Barns. I cannot rave enough about them. Their customer service is out of this world, and price is definitely reasonable. We've used them for a couple of projects and will use them in the future for any other expansion we do. They aren't as well known, so here's there website: www.tritonbarns.com

As it was explained to me by Curtis:

Just powder coat over steel, once the powder coat is chipped, the steel will rust

Hot-dip galvanizing bonds zinc to the steel and keeps it from rusting, and safe for the animals if they decide to chew the bars...My stalls have a 25 year rust free warranty so I don't have to worry about the rust issue. Hope that was helpful! Say hi to Chad or Curtis for me if you call them!

Triton Barns

I have to agree with Jumipn Beans about Triton Barns. I am building a new barn too. My dad was going to weld the stall fronts himself, but he passed away in April. I looked around online and they are not cheap. Triton was one of, if not the, cheapest, and the quality really is great. I have not ordered them yet bacause we have a lot to do before then, but will when we are ready. The owner, Curtis, sent me a whole bar in the mail as a sample. He quoted me $525 per front, galvanized, THEN powdercoated. Dividers in the size i needed were $300. That is a very good price, and they can do any size.. He does push the "Euro" designs hard, and if you are a chick, me might hit on you, but hey, I put up with it for the price!